


Lighthouse Calling

by juvjuvychan



Series: Healing [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Implied Relationships, M/M, potential triggering content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-19
Updated: 2014-10-19
Packaged: 2018-02-21 20:13:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2480954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juvjuvychan/pseuds/juvjuvychan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fitz can't sleep, can't breath, can't stop seeing Jemma and wanting to see Jemma.  Fitz can't deal with the choking lack of air that has rotted his brain, or the blank way Ward looked at him as he tossed out excuses for the fact Fitz's brain might as well be mush splattered on the bus.  </p>
<p>Fitz can see Mack, and Mack can see Fitz in a way no one else can.  Not anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lighthouse Calling

**Author's Note:**

> Fitz/Mack has stolen my heart. This is quick, and messy, but unfortunately not dirty. All mistakes are mine cause again, quick and messy.

Dimmed white walls with the smell of sticky sweat slicked skin choking the air as Fitz tried to get the words pass his lips. Staring at her - at Jemma - with frantic eyes wetting with shine because this might be his last chance ever. Her mouth is thick cotton with a lead weighted tongue and a dirt dry throat but Fitz has to say this. He has to tell her how he feels. 

So he does. Then he pulls the trigger and water salty sweet comes rushing in. His vision blinkers in and out like a silent car alarm going off in his dust fuzzy brain. Images rush past in water colored blurs as arms struggle to pull him along like an anchor weighing her down. 

Fitz doesn’t see the light as they surface, instead he sees the sad look in her eye as she hears his feelings. Instead he hears a voice say, “I wanted to give you a fighting chance.” 

Fitz wakes up. Lungs expanding and shrinking so fast his chest feels as though it will explode. The same salty sweat smell curls up in his nose choking him. Reminding him of the thin air in their would-be death container. Jemma eyes stare sadly at him from across the brightly lit room. He can’t sleep in pitch blackness it reminds him to much of the ocean floor. He can’t sleep in dim lighting, it reminds him to much of their prison. 

Jemma continues to stare, eyes just as sad as they were when he confessed. Her blue sweater with the white trim collar, brown hair pulls back in a low ponytail, the sad droop of her cheeks, curving down to the slant of her mouth. Everything about her is morose; regretful. 

Fitz clutches his head and tries to breath. 

He tries to remember the tools the doctors had given him. Timetables to regulate any potential panic attacks, exercises to calm his mind. Nothing works to reveal the slithering underneath his skin, the millions of ants picking apart his insides and carting them off further and further away from who he was. 

Fitz jumps out of his bed, slapping the sheets off with heavy hands and clumsy feet. He reached a hand out to grasp some air for his lungs but comes up with nothing but white walls closing in on him from all sides. The taste of salt laying heavy on his tongue. 

Fitz punches out of the room, hair sticky on his forehead and mind reeling trying to piece itself back together. The pieces are all wrong though. A puzzle he’s trying to reassemble from before but nothing matches anymore. Corner pieces and the insides are all missing leaving him with nothing but chunks of what he remembered. 

It’s an equation Fitz can’t solve and Fitz has never not been able to solve an equation before. The frustration is stone heavy in his blood weighing him down like the anchor Jemma must have thought he was when she left. 

Jemma is right behind him, following like air no a sound trickling behind her. No soft exhale of breath, no sharp clack of shoes, no soft brushing of hair swishing back and forth with her steps. Nothing but air. 

Jemma is here with him, yet she’s not. 

Fitz clutches his head a crazed laugh bubbling up like acid in his belly because he must be going crazy. He must. He can feel it like watery shackles around his ankles and hands locked in place by the set of Ward’s blank dark eyes. 

A heaviness settles on him, drowning him, and then. Then a heaviness is lifting him up, bringing Fitz back up to air and light. His struggles are futile, though he fights all the same against the foreign lifesaver. 

“Kid,” a voice says heavy and low. Hands touch his shoulders, moving him and pulling him along like a gentle tide. Fitz finds himself settled in the cold touch of one of the lab chairs. Metal a shock to his overheated skin. He leans back, breathes, and the voice speaks again. “Come on Turbo, come back to me.” 

Back. Fitz swims towards that voice, mind working overtime to rework his surroundings. His vision clears and he expects to see the soft edged face framed with brown hair and pale white skin. Instead Fitz is confronted with two piercing brown eyes, the grim settle of a mouth outlined with carefully trimmed facial hair, and the dark brown skin of Mack. 

“Mack?” He asks sluggish and slow. “What’re - You’re not suppose - I don’t - that is - that is - I was, was.” The words tumbling off his tongue like a pair of dice scattering along the floor messy and loud. “I was - was,” He tries, god does Fitz tries, but the word is a light in the distance. A lighthouse signaling where he has to go but he’s standard in the middle of the ocean without a paddle. 

“Having a damned panic attack that’s what.” Mack says pressing the harsh edge of a cool glass against his lips. Fitz drinks, the sting of lemon sharp and sour on his tongue that wakes him up bit by bit. “Jesus Turbo,” Mack says resting a heavy hand on the back of Fitz’s sweat sticky neck. It feels good there, solid and real in a way that Jemma isn’t. Not anymore. 

“I’m not an animated orange snail,” Fitz finds himself saying before he can swallow the words down. Mack smiles, but it isn’t teasing, instead it’s soft, a smooth curve of his lips silk like and genuine. 

“I could call you kid if that’d make you feel better.” Fitz bristles. 

“Not a kid either,” he says pouting around the rim of his glass. He drinks the lemon water with the feel of Mack’s steady hand at his neck. His mind unfurls rising like dawn and illuminating the darker corners he lost himself in. Fitz breathes, and for once tonight, it isn’t a difficult task. 

Mack laughs, light and sure not weighted down by anything which Fitz wonders how Mack is able to do that. He doesn’t know much about the man, but he’s caught him staring into nothing sometimes. A tense set to his shoulders that reminds Fitz of how he knows he looks sometimes. A kind of weight that lays on your soul trying to drag you down. 

Fitz doesn’t know how Mack can do it. When Fitz hasn’t been able to laugh in months. 

“I don’t - I don’t,” Fitz stuttered then stops. Mack looks at him, stare leveled and Fitz takes a deep breath. The hand on his neck squeezes and Fitz feels a sort of strength begin to fill up the empty spaces within himself. “You confuse me.” Mack raises an eyebrow but his lips quirk up until teeth - a shiny row of straight white - show. 

“If there’s something you wanna know, you just gotta ask,” Mack says so easily as if the secret parts of himself don’t have to be secret. As if he’s not ashamed and Fitz wants that so badly. To be able to smile again, smile and spill everything out on the floor, all the thoughts and secrets he can’t get out because of - of -

“I hate Ward,” Fitz says surprising himself. He’s never really hated anyone with the boiling hot heat that he does when he thinks of Ward. He’s been jealous of others before, he’s disliked people. Once upon a time Fitz thought he hated this other woman at the academy who he thought threatened his place in Jemma’s life. Ward is different. When Fitz thinks of Ward he sees water and dim darkness. When he sees Ward he tastes salt and fear on his tongue. 

Fitz closes his eyes and shudders. 

He feels a brief exhale of air touch his chin and then Fitz is being pulled into the strong set of Mack’s shoulder. The scratchy texture of Mack’s sweater tickles his chin. It smells like fabric softener and the rustic scented candles Mack likes to burn in his bunk. Fitz turns his head burrowing deeper into Mack’s neck and feels warm. 

“Yea,” Mack says fingers pressing down in soothing jolts on Fitz’s neck. “I kinda hate the bastard too.” Fitz laughs. 

“You don’t even know him,” Fitz says fingers reaching up to curl into Mack’s chest. The fabric bunching up but Fitz could still feel the solid muscle underneath. 

“It’s the beard, screams evil nazi.” Fitz laughs again and then jerks back because he just laughed. Twice. “Hey, hey,” Mack says voice flowing over him like warm bath water. The spray of his words dotting along his skin and calming his mind. “It’s alright to be okay sometimes, and not okay others. It’s cool man, we’ve all been there.” 

Fitz bites his lip, ducking his head down when Mack tips his chin back up to meet his eyes. 

“Go ahead,” Mack says giving him permission and the words cascade out of Fitz’s mouth like a waterfall. 

“How do you - do you - How are you able to?” Fitz feels a swirling mix of frustration and appreciation because while he can’t get the words fully out, he also knows Mack isn’t going to judge him for it. 

“Deal with everything?” Mack asks and Fitz nods because while it wasn’t the words Fitz was looking for, they’re close enough. Mack can’t finish his sentences like Jemma can, but Mack does understand him in a way Jemma can’t. Not anymore, not since things changed. Mack sighs and looks up at the ceiling. The bright lab lights beaming down upon him casting him in a sort of holy glow if Fitz believed in religion. 

“I guess, well it takes time for one.” Mack explains and laughs at Fitz’s disappointed pout. “Hey Turbo I’m not Jesus walks over here. I’m just a guy who’s seen some real shit in his life.” He reached out a hand and strokes Fitz’s hair light and unassuming. “We all have, some of us more than others because that’s the cards life deals to us. Some hands are better, some are worse, but you keep playing the game anyway.”

“I’ve never played cards,” Fitz says leaning into Mack’s hand. Mack chuckles.

“Yeah I didn’t expect anything else.” The twist of his smile becomes forlorn. “It takes time Fitz,” he says and Fitz feels a flush rushing to his cheeks at the sound of his name. “It takes time, and effort, and a damn good support system.” Mack peers into his eyes locking him in yet Fitz feels completely free. “There are times when I remember the faces of my friends as they were shot. How I had to pull the trigger on some of them when things went down. Having people I’ve know for years, people I would have died for - and having to kill them myself.” Mack pauses and his eyes take on that same distance dimness Fitz sometimes sees when no one else is looking. “Before that I had missions, missions I wish I hadn’t taken, but I did anyway. Missions dealing with people who - who were monsters. Like that Ward guy down there. Killing without remorse or worse reveling in it. Sick people who wanted to make the world sick with them.” 

Mack locks eyes with him again. “But time, time helps. Talking helps, finding new people to trust helps. It’s never easy,” he laughs bitter and steel sharp. “But it’s worth is Fitz, I promise you that. You will get better - and I don’t mean being better at who you were, I mean finding yourself able to be better with who you are now.” 

Rough fingers carefully trace his waterline wiping away a string of tears Fitz didn’t even realize he had released. He blinks and his eyelashes brush against the pad of Mack’s thumb. He can breath, Fitz realizes with startling clarity. Jemma is no where around, but Fitz can breath. 

“Thank you,” he says hoping Mack understands. Not just for not treating him as if he’s made of glass, or for tonight, but for this feeling. Of acceptance, understand, and warmth that cradles Fitz in a cocoon of safety he hasn’t felt in a long time. 

“Anytime,” Mack says, but Fitz hears the true meaning of the word that says ‘I’m here.’ Fitz reaches up to gently grip Mack’s large hand in his. The air around them suspends itself tight like a pulled back rubber band. There’s a heated flicker in Mack’s eyes that Fitz wants to reach out and catch. A fluttering firefly that Fitz wants to capture in his palms. 

But Mack doesn’t hand it over, instead pulling back slow and careful. He backs away to reach out a hand for Fitz to take. 

“Lets get you back to your room.” Taking the offered hand Fitz follows the line of Mack’s back to his room. They say their good nights and Fitz eyes close before he even hits his bed. 

Mack jarred up the heat between them, instead handing Fitz a paddle to get back home. All the while standing at the top of that distance lighthouse; its beacon of light guiding him to shore.


End file.
